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Tavie
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re: Looking for book suggestions..

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I was searching the forums trying to find a post about good books to read, but I fail at searching it seems (or maybe it was not in AoR forums as I thought) Anyway, I just finished the Eragon series and am looking for suggestions for good books.

I am thinking of trying the Hyperion series, and Somo suggested the GoT series (Song of Ice and Fire series), but figured I would toss out this question in hopes of adding some new suggestions to my reading list.

What are some of your favorite books? something you would highly recommend to others? (not genre specific)

Hope this finds you all well and full of book suggestions Happy


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I read the first three and a half books of the Game of Thrones series, and then I just got tired of it. It was really, really good and interesting for a while, but then all of the things that made it good and interesting started to just get tiresome. Of course there are a lot of people that don't feel that way, but definitely buy one book at a time if you're going to give those a shot.

My favorite fantasy series (mostly because it was the first one I read) is the Shannara series, starting with the Sword of Shannara. There's a ton of books in it at this point, but the original is a great stand-alone book. There's two other stand-alone books after the first that maybe aren't quite as good but read pretty quick, then there's a four book series, The Heritage of Shannara, that's really the dude's masterwork. I've read those four books probably a half dozen times, but you do need to read the first three beforehand. He wrote a prequel that's good, and several other trilogy sets, the first of which is good, but they go downhill from there in my opinion.

My favorite book (by a pretty wide margin) is the one widely considered to be the first fantasy book, but it's not high/epic fantasy at all. It's called Phantastes, by George Macdonald, and he wrote it in the mid-1800s. It's a difficult book to describe. It's very surreal and almost hypnotizing at points. The whole thing can be read as any number of allegories. It's not a book like any other book you've ever read, and the fewer expectations you have when you start reading it, the better you will enjoy it. If you're a fan of fantasy (sounds like you are), then you should definitely read this book. Not because it's a fantasy book, but because this book is where the Epic Journey of the Unchangeable Hero from classical epic poetry first crossed over into the very changeable fairy-tale world of European coming-of-age folk stories, and the genesis of the modern fantasy genre occurred. Also because it's just a really, really good book.


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re: Looking for book suggestions..

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Also, Neuromancer by William Gibson is a fantastic book. He coined the terms "cyberspace" and "the matrix" in it in 1984, and it's a very cool cyber-action/mystery story. It's a pretty quick read too, not very long.


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re: Books, you say?

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I just finished the Hollows series by Kim Harrison; the final book having just recently come out. I've got them all in Kindle edition from Amazon now, which by the way, even if you don't own a kindle, they offer various mobile apps and even a desktop app for free.

First book of the series, Dead Witch Walking
http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Witch-Walking-Hollows-Book-ebook/dp/B004UAVAE6/ref=sr_1_1_ha?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1412513251&sr=1-1&keywords=dead+witch+walking

Only $4.00 so not a big loss if you don't like it or it's not your "thing".
Tavie
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re: Looking for book suggestions..

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Thanks, for the suggestions. I started Hyperion and will probably do fire and Ice once I am done with it. Then I will check out the Hollows series.

I will check out the rest of Fright's suggestions after all that.

If any others come along, please feel free to add your suggestions. Maybe even list your top 10 favorites, regardless of genre. I know quite a few of you are or were avid readers (eyes Sterne and Klik).


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re: Looking for book suggestions..

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If you want to step outside the modern fantasy box, you should read some of the books I've read lately: Dante's Divine Comedy, Faust, Ovid's Metamorphoses, The Maltese Falcon, and I'm currently reading The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde.

Here's my list of upcoming books (eventually), in no particular order:
Heart of Darkness - Conrad
Lilith - George MacDonald
Of Mice and Men
This Town - Leibovich
Religion in Human Experience - William James
Structure of Scientific Revolution - Kuhn
On the Nature of Things - Lucretius
Zealot - Reza Aslan (and his other books)
Boomerang - Michael Lewis
Reign of Error - Diance Ravitch
Varieties of Religious Experience - William James
It's Kind of a Funny Story - Ned Vizzini


They're worth looking into, maybe something you'll find interesting too.

There's also quite a few of those Shannara books that I would like to read, still. They're good, I'm telling you, you should give them a shot!



Last edited by GM Fright on 03/26/2015 6:03 pm; edited 1 time in total


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The Picture of Dorian Grey is actually one of my favorite. Kudos to you, hope you enjoy it as much as I did!


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Somosito wrote:
The Picture of Dorian Grey is actually one of my favorite. Kudos to you, hope you enjoy it as much as I did!


I love that book. I unfortunately watched the movie first so I kind of had my thoughts skewed during my read.

Some of my favorites are:
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Kimlin
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re: Looking for book suggestions..

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The Hot Zone. Richard Preston.
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